{"id":60947,"date":"2026-09-09T22:56:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T13:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/?p=60947"},"modified":"2026-09-09T22:58:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T13:58:34","slug":"pisa-2025-korea-scores-high-the-netherlands-has-work-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/pisa-2025-korea-scores-high-the-netherlands-has-work-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"PISA 2025: Korea Scores High. The Netherlands Has Work to Do."},"content":{"rendered":"
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PISA 2025: Korea Scores High. The Netherlands Has Work to Do. <\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Looking beyond the rankings, from someone who worked in Dutch schools and now lives in Korea<\/h3>

The new PISA results are out.<\/p>

Korea again performs strongly. The Dutch results are far less reassuring, particularly when it comes to reading.<\/p>

That alone is enough for headlines and rankings. Korea high, the Netherlands lower. End of story.<\/p>

Except that it is not.<\/p>

I spent many years working in Dutch education, including as an interim director in primary schools. I now live and work in Korea and regularly deal with education on both sides.<\/p>

So when I looked at the new figures, my first reaction was not simply to compare the scores.<\/p>

I found myself thinking about situations I had seen in Dutch schools years ago. About teacher education. About expectations. About what schools are allowed to decide for themselves. And also about Korea, where the results are impressive but where teachers certainly do not work in some educational paradise.<\/p>

The comparison raises some uncomfortable questions.<\/p>

Almost four out of ten<\/h2>

In PISA 2025, 61% of Dutch 15-year-olds reached at least Level 2 in reading, the level the OECD uses as a basic proficiency benchmark.<\/p>

In Korea, that figure was 82%.<\/p>

That means almost four out of ten Dutch 15-year-olds did not reach that basic reading level.<\/p>

There is some statistical uncertainty around the exact Dutch PISA figures because the Dutch sample did not fully meet all OECD sampling requirements. That should be mentioned.<\/p>

But it does not make the problem disappear.<\/p>

The longer trend is poor as well. Compared with 2015, the proportion of Dutch students below Level 2 has increased strongly in reading and has also risen in mathematics and science.<\/p>

Of course, this does not mean that Dutch education is suddenly bad.<\/p>

There are excellent Dutch schools. There are excellent teachers. Dutch students still perform relatively well in mathematics, and many pupils achieve at a high level.<\/p>

But we cannot keep explaining away the fact that a growing group of young people is struggling with basic skills.<\/p>

Reading is not a luxury subject. If children cannot read properly, almost everything else becomes more difficult.<\/p>

So where is it going wrong?<\/p>

I do not believe there is one simple answer.<\/p>

But there are parts of the Dutch system that deserve a more critical look.<\/p>

Freedom is valuable. But it also asks a lot from schools.<\/h2>

Dutch schools have considerable freedom.<\/p>

That is intentional. Schools can choose teaching methods, organise education in different ways and make decisions that suit their pupils and their own educational philosophy.<\/p>

I understand the reasoning behind that. In fact, I have always valued it.<\/p>

Teachers are professionals. Schools are not factories. You do not want a ministry in The Hague prescribing every lesson.<\/p>

But during my own years in schools, I occasionally saw another side of that freedom.<\/p>

When results were disappointing, the first response was not always: our teaching must improve.<\/p>

Sometimes expectations slowly changed instead.<\/p>

Perhaps this group of pupils was simply weaker. Perhaps the intake was different. Perhaps these children could not reasonably be expected to achieve what previous groups had achieved.<\/p>

Plans were adjusted. Goals could be reformulated. Parents could still be told that their child was making progress.<\/p>

None of this had to involve bad intentions.<\/p>

That was exactly what bothered me.<\/p>

Expectations can go down without anyone consciously deciding that standards should go down.<\/p>

And when that happens, a school can still feel that it is working very hard and doing a reasonable job.<\/p>

I have seen enough good schools to know that autonomy can work extremely well.<\/p>

But I have also seen enough differences between schools, school leaders and teaching teams to wonder whether we sometimes expect too much from that autonomy.<\/p>

Freedom works best when the people using it have the knowledge, confidence and professional discipline to say: no, this result is not good enough, and we need to change what we are doing.<\/p>

Are we sufficiently certain that this happens everywhere?<\/p>

The government is tightening the requirements<\/h2>

The Dutch government is not ignoring the problem.<\/p>

New core objectives for Dutch language and mathematics took effect in August 2026. They are intended to be more concrete about what pupils should know and be able to do. Schools have several years to implement them fully.<\/p>

After the PISA results were published, State Secretary Judith Tielen also made clear that expectations need to rise. Language should receive attention across subjects, educational quality needs to improve and schools should be held more clearly to account for results.<\/p>

I support that direction.<\/p>

My hesitation starts when I hear that the next steps will again be developed together with school boards, teachers, parents, professional organisations and other parties.<\/p>

Consultation is part of Dutch culture. It often works well.<\/p>

But perhaps education has reached a point where some things should no longer be endlessly negotiated.<\/p>

We do not need a national script for every lesson.<\/p>

We may, however, need a much clearer line that says:<\/p>

This is what every child must be taught.<\/p>

This is what every school must be able to deliver.<\/p>

And if that minimum is not reached, explaining the result is not enough.<\/p>

That may sound less typically Dutch.<\/p>

Perhaps that is exactly why it deserves discussion.<\/p>

And then there is the Pabo<\/h2>

For years I have had similar questions about primary teacher education.<\/p>

The Pabo has a difficult job. A primary teacher is expected to do an enormous number of things well.<\/p>

Teaching children to read.<\/p>

Teaching spelling and mathematics.<\/p>

Understanding child development.<\/p>

Managing a classroom.<\/p>

Recognising learning problems.<\/p>

Communicating with parents.<\/p>

Teaching a wide range of subjects.<\/p>

And doing all of that with 25 or 30 children who do not all learn at the same speed or arrive at school with the same background.<\/p>

That is a serious profession.<\/p>

So I want the qualification to be serious as well.<\/p>

What must every beginning primary teacher actually know before receiving a diploma?<\/p>

How good must their own language and mathematics be?<\/p>

How much should they know about reading instruction?<\/p>

How thoroughly should they understand didactics?<\/p>

And should a student be able to graduate if those basics are not firmly in place?<\/p>

Dutch teacher education is certainly not unregulated. There are statutory competence requirements, national knowledge bases, accreditation requirements and forms of national testing.<\/p>

Still, there is reason to question how consistently the final standard is guaranteed.<\/p>

In 2025, the Dutch Inspectorate of Education and Radboud University examined 47 full-time routes into primary teaching. They found considerable differences between programmes. Not all statutory competence requirements were clearly reflected in the stated learning objectives of all routes.<\/p>

That does not prove that these programmes are poor.<\/p>

It does not prove that their graduates cannot teach.<\/p>

But it does leave a fairly basic problem.<\/p>

If we cannot clearly see the same required professional foundation in every route, how certain are we that every diploma represents the same minimum level?<\/p>

The Dutch Education Council was quite direct about this in 2025. It concluded that there is insufficient certainty that graduates from the many different routes into teaching are all adequately competent when they finish their programme.<\/p>

The Council recommended clearer statutory competence requirements, national theory examinations and practical assessments based on national guidelines.<\/p>

I find that a sensible direction.<\/p>

It does not mean that every Pabo should teach exactly the same programme.<\/p>

They can keep their own approach.<\/p>

But at the end of the programme, there should be much less room for doubt.<\/p>

A beginning teacher either demonstrates the required knowledge and professional ability, or does not yet receive the qualification.<\/p>

That may sound rather strict.<\/p>

I think children are entitled to that strictness.<\/p>

Who trains the student teacher in school?<\/h2>

There is another part of teacher education that I have often wondered about.<\/p>

A student learns a large part of teaching in the school itself.<\/p>

That means a classroom teacher or mentor is suddenly not only responsible for children, but also for helping to train a future colleague.<\/p>

Some teachers are excellent at this.<\/p>

But being an experienced teacher does not automatically make someone a good teacher educator.<\/p>

Do we check that carefully enough?<\/p>

Does every mentor understand how to observe a student, give useful feedback and assess professional development?<\/p>

And when a trainee is not good enough, how easy is it in practice to say so?<\/p>

This is difficult territory because schools desperately need new colleagues.<\/p>

But workplace training should not become the soft part of a qualification in which students somehow move forward because everyone wants them to succeed.<\/p>

Again, I am not claiming that this happens everywhere.<\/p>

I am saying that the quality of the people who train future teachers in schools deserves just as much attention as the curriculum of the Pabo itself.<\/p>

Teacher shortages do not make this easier<\/h2>

The Netherlands has a serious teacher shortage.<\/p>

In primary education, the estimated shortage in 2025 was around 6.3% of total employment.<\/p>

For policymakers that is a statistic.<\/p>

For a school director it means something much simpler: there are children in a classroom on Monday morning and somebody has to teach them.<\/p>

I know what that pressure feels like.<\/p>

That is why alternative routes into teaching can make sense. Education should be able to attract capable people who did not choose teacher training at the age of eighteen.<\/p>

But there is a danger.<\/p>

When there are too few qualified people, it becomes very attractive to create more routes, more exceptions and more flexibility.<\/p>

Some of that is necessary.<\/p>

But the final level should not become flexible as well.<\/p>

A teacher shortage can explain why we need different ways into the profession.<\/p>

It should never become the reason why we become less demanding about the level at which someone enters the classroom as a qualified teacher.<\/p>

I sometimes use a simple comparison.<\/p>

If we had a shortage of pilots, we would look for better ways to train more pilots.<\/p>

We would not solve the shortage by becoming less certain that they could fly.<\/p>

Korea: excellent scores, but not an easy system<\/h2>

And then there is Korea.<\/p>

If I stopped at the PISA scores, I could write a very simple article.<\/p>

Korea is doing something right. The Netherlands should copy it.<\/p>

I do not believe that.<\/p>

Korean results are impressive. In PISA 2025, 86% of Korean students reached at least Level 2 in science, 81% in mathematics and 82% in reading.<\/p>

Those figures deserve recognition.<\/p>

But the longer I live here, the less interested I become in romantic pictures of Korean education.<\/p>

Korean teachers face serious pressure.<\/p>

Parents can be extremely demanding. Teachers complain about administrative workload. Classroom authority is no longer as self-evident as outsiders sometimes imagine. Concerns about teacher stress, parent behaviour and student discipline have become part of the public debate.<\/p>

TALIS 2024 illustrates that pressure. A large proportion of Korean teachers report stress related to parents, administration and classroom discipline.<\/p>

So Korea’s strong results are certainly not being achieved by relaxed teachers working in perfectly disciplined classrooms.<\/p>

There is another complication.<\/p>

Private education is enormous here.<\/p>

In 2025, 75.7% of Korean primary and secondary students participated in private education. Among primary pupils the figure was 84.4%. Families spent KRW 27.5 trillion on private education.<\/p>

Anyone who lives in Korea sees this every day.<\/p>

Children leave school and continue studying at hagwons. Some have private lessons as well. Academic achievement matters enormously to many families.<\/p>

So when Korea scores well, what exactly are we measuring the success of?<\/p>

The school?<\/p>

The curriculum?<\/p>

The teacher?<\/p>

The family?<\/p>

The hagwon?<\/p>

Private tutoring?<\/p>

The wider culture of expectations?<\/p>

Probably all of them.<\/p>

That is why I am cautious about simple international comparisons.<\/p>

The Netherlands and Korea have different problems<\/h2>

The Dutch and Korean situations are almost opposites in some respects.<\/p>

The Netherlands gives schools and professionals a great deal of room. The problem is whether the minimum underneath that freedom is always firm enough.<\/p>

Korea has very strong expectations around achievement. The problem is whether those expectations sometimes become too demanding for teachers, pupils and families.<\/p>

I would not want the Netherlands to become Korea.<\/p>

And I do not think Korea should become the Netherlands.<\/p>

There are Dutch educational qualities worth protecting: room for individual development, relatively informal relationships, different educational approaches and the expectation that young people gradually learn to think and work independently.<\/p>

Korea has qualities from which Dutch professionals can also learn. Academic effort is taken seriously. Expectations are generally high. Education matters. Children are expected to work.<\/p>

Perhaps the most useful comparison is not to ask which system is better.<\/p>

It is to look at what happens when each system takes one of its strengths too far.<\/p>

Too much autonomy without a firm common standard can create inconsistency.<\/p>

Very high expectations without enough professional space can create pressure.<\/p>

Both deserve attention.<\/p>

PISA is not about Dutch universities<\/h2>

For Korean readers in particular, I want to make one thing very clear.<\/p>

PISA measures the performance of 15-year-old students.<\/p>

It does not measure Dutch universities or universities of applied sciences.<\/p>

A disappointing Dutch PISA score is therefore not evidence that Dutch higher education is poor.<\/p>

The Netherlands continues to have a strong and internationally oriented higher education sector. Research universities and universities of applied sciences have different roles, and Dutch higher education can be particularly attractive to international students because of its international environment, applied programmes, independence and relatively open learning culture.<\/p>

That is a different discussion from PISA.<\/p>

The same applies to individual schools.<\/p>

A national score can tell us something important about a system.<\/p>

It cannot tell a parent whether a particular school is good.<\/p>

And it certainly cannot tell an international student whether the Netherlands or Korea is the better destination for that individual student.<\/p>

Cross-border education is not destination marketing<\/h2>

This matters to me professionally.<\/p>

I work between countries. Part of my work involves students and institutions looking across borders.<\/p>

That should not mean telling Korean students that the Netherlands is perfect.<\/p>

It is not.<\/p>

Nor should it mean presenting Korea to European institutions simply as an interesting market.<\/p>

Education works differently here.<\/p>

A Korean student going to the Netherlands may suddenly be expected to speak up, discuss, question a teacher, organise work independently and make choices that were previously much more structured.<\/p>

A Dutch student in Korea may find the hierarchy, academic expectations and role of education in daily life very different.<\/p>

Those differences can be exciting.<\/p>

They can also be difficult.<\/p>

Good cross-border education advice should prepare people for them.<\/p>

For a student, the useful question is not simply which country scores highest.<\/p>

It is where that particular student is most likely to thrive.<\/p>

Maybe we should stop talking about each other and visit<\/h2>

While writing this, another thought kept coming back.<\/p>

Education is difficult to understand from OECD tables, policy documents and academic papers alone.<\/p>

You need to walk into a school.<\/p>

Talk to a teacher.<\/p>

Watch a lesson.<\/p>

Speak with school leaders and teacher educators.<\/p>

See what happens when a parent complains, when a child falls behind or when a trainee teacher struggles.<\/p>

That is why I would be genuinely interested to know whether Dutch education professionals would see value in a small professional study visit to Korea.<\/p>

Not an educational sightseeing trip.<\/p>

And certainly not a tour designed to prove that Korean education is better.<\/p>

I mean a serious visit for school leaders, teacher educators, policymakers and other education professionals who want to look at questions such as academic expectations, teacher authority, parental involvement, teacher education and student pressure.<\/p>

The reverse could be just as interesting.<\/p>

Would Korean education professionals want to visit the Netherlands and look at school autonomy, teacher education, student independence, educational leadership and the different ways Dutch schools organise learning?<\/p>

At this stage I am not launching a programme.<\/p>

I first want to know whether professionals on either side would actually be interested.<\/p>

If you work in education in the Netherlands or Korea and this idea appeals to you, I would be very interested to hear from you.<\/p>

Not because one country has the answer.<\/p>

But because seeing another education system from the inside can make you look at your own with fresh eyes.<\/p>

Sources and further reading<\/h3>

OECD \u2014 PISA 2025 Results: Country Note, Netherlands<\/em>, 2026<\/p>

OECD \u2014 PISA 2025 Results: Country Note, Korea<\/em>, 2026<\/p>

Dutch House of Representatives \u2014 Parliamentary discussion on declining reading performance following PISA 2025, 8 September 2026<\/p>

SLO \u2014 New core objectives for Dutch language and mathematics, 2026<\/p>

Inspectorate of Education \/ Radboud University \u2014 Inventarisatie curricula voltijdroutes naar het leraarschap primair onderwijs<\/em>, 2025<\/p>

Dutch Education Council \u2014 Bekwaamheid beter borgen<\/em>, 2025<\/p>

Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science \u2014 Teacher and school-leader shortage data, 2025\/2026<\/p>

OECD \u2014 Results from TALIS 2024: Korea<\/em><\/p>

Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea \u2014 2025 Private Education Expenditure Survey<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PISA 2025: Korea Scores High. The Netherlands Has Work to Do. Looking beyond the rankings, from someone who worked in Dutch schools and now lives in Korea The new PISA results are out. Korea again performs strongly. The Dutch results are far less reassuring, particularly when it comes to reading. That alone is enough for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kramerconsult.kr\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}